iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 17/08/2026

I hope someone enjoyed the Grebe or Water Rail their phone mistook for the pigletty sound of my wet crocs on grass this morning. #dogsofbluesky #birding #Scotland

A stunning black Labrador sits in long wet grass, looking up at the camera with amber eyes and an expression of mild concern. Two crocs-clad feet are visible in the foreground.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 16/08/2026

"You must throw the stick. ...You may not touch the stick. You must throw the stick." -Echo #dogsofbluesky #labrador #Scotland

An objectively perfect soaking wet black Labrador stands on a leaf-strewn woodland path, tongue out, looking directly at the camera with an expression of absolute intent. A stick lies on the ground in the foreground, untouched. A moss-covered burn runs through the trees behind her.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 14/08/2026

1972 Norwegian Arctic. Strøm mushes his dog pack, the past mushes him, while something colder and darker than the polar night waits out on the ice. thesearedogyears.dog/anomaly.html #shortstory #booksky #horror #dogsofbluesky

Anomaly at ARCESS-7. Svalbard Archipelago, Norwegian Arctic, 1972. Text reads: "Fucking Eriksen and his fool's errand. Four kilometers out. Another six to the ridge."

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 22/07/2026

I hurdled, she limboed. We shared the wild raspberries on the other side. #DogsOfBluesky #Nature #Scotland

Sunlight filters through an open woodland with tall grass and a moss-covered fallen tree across the foreground. A black dog ducks underneath the trunk, with only her back half and upright tail visible, heading towards a bright clearing.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/07/2026

thirty miles of good clean air between our hill and someone else's mountain tonight

A view over a hedgerow, out of focus in the foreground, onto a green field where cattle lie at rest. Beyond, a dark line of beech trees, and on the horizon the mountains of Arran, blue-grey against a pale evening sky streaked with soft cloud.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 30/06/2026

I have a Dog Years story I want to share for Pride. Just in time! It's set a long time ago, with a wolf who finds herself drawn to strange creatures and their fire, and the pack who scent the difference in her. Part of a series, come and see. thesearedogyears.dog/crossing.html #Pride

thesearedogyears.dog

Aurignac, Southern France · 32,000 BCE — Dog Years

A wolf at the treeline. A fire in the dark. The moment everything changed.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/03/2026

Scottish winters can be relentless. Stormy, cold, wet and dark. If you like the outdoors and you work and commute, you can end up living for the weekend. Hoping for dry weather on your day off. Then the day arrives when you realise the 9-5 has left you enough light, and the world is wide again.

A black dog silhouetted in the shallows against a vivid pink and orange sunset over the Firth of Clyde, Arran in the distance.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 12/03/2026

2/2 What if something has an eye on the balance? The Wild Hunt arrives for her. The storm is moving over the prairie, and the tingle in your spine says things are about to get weird. thesearedogyears.dog/wildhunt.html #booksky #DogsOfBluesky This is now.

thesearedogyears.dog

Prairie / Sky / Myth · 1885 / Never / Always / Now — Dog Years

A prairie stray's last breath. Thunder on the horizon. The Hunt rides.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 12/03/2026

1/2 Packless: a stray's life on the Dakota frontier. Loyal, abandoned, surviving, alone. Animal lives can be hard. Even (maybe especially) the ones who get close to us. thesearedogyears.dog/packless.html

thesearedogyears.dog

Dakota Territory, USA · 1885 — Dog Years

Dakota Territory, 1885. A wagon's wheel. A stray bleeding out in the grass. The sky pulling harder.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 10/03/2026

The stories page was a list. Functional and... fine. The problem: each story lives in a completely different time and place. A list flattens that. So I rebuilt it as a carousel: one story, one image, one world at a time. thesearedogyears.dog #webdev #booksky #amwriting #indieweb

A full-screen carousel card for the Dog Years stories page. A sepia photograph of a stray dog on a dusty frontier street. The title 'Packless', date '1885', location 'Dakota Territory USA', and a gold-outlined 'Read This Story' button.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 09/03/2026

I'm not a historian or a futurologist, so I'm not your guide to the ancient world, or an oracle on potential futures. I just want to go to these times and places and be immersed. Not just what happened, but what was it like? thesearedogyears.dog Come see where we go next.

thesearedogyears.dog

Dog Years

Standalone stories about humans and dogs across tens of thousands of years, with optional sound and images.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 09/03/2026

Dogs have been everywhere that humans have, but didn't try to narrate it or give their hot take. They just caught the scent of joy, heard mischief on the hill a mile off, felt danger coming along their spine. That makes them the perfect comrades for adventure. Here's Echo this weekend.

A black Labrador turning toward the camera in the foreground, mouth open, ears alert. Behind a metal farm gate, a group of cattle stand in mud backlit by a low winter sun. East Ayrshire, Scotland.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 07/03/2026

wing's tip carves the sky mastery needs no witness the buzzard just is

A common buzzard soars against a cloudless deep blue sky, wings fully extended, primary feathers splayed at the tips like open fingers.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 06/03/2026

Planning a euro trip on the ferry early June. Belgium, Netherlands, Le Touquet. Echo has opinions (pro cheese mostly), but limited geographical knowledge. What's unmissable with a dog? Anywhere we shouldn't bother with? #DogsOfBluesky #Belgium #Netherlands #France #travel

A black Labrador sits at a ferry porthole, gazing out at the sea with the focused expression of someone who has important nautical contributions to make.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 05/03/2026

We had a contextless yellow van with 'potatoes' stenciled on the side driving round my neighbourhood in the 80s. No phone number, no name, just the assumption you'd what- flag him down to access the potatoes? Also this:

A billboard reading GABBO IS COMING. No further context provided. None needed. This is fine.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 05/03/2026

What about Papillon by Henri Charrière? If you haven't seen the film already- even better: first read the autobiography, THEN watch the film (NOT the 2017 remake 💀), THEN go down the controversy rabbit hole if you want.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 05/03/2026

A short story about your body betraying you, the harshness of the frontier, and what we hold onto longest as the world starts to fade. #LiteraryFiction #HistoricalFiction #DogsOfBluesky #WritingCommunity #BookSky #ShortStory

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 05/03/2026

"The wheel catches her hindquarters and she's down hard, muzzle in the dirt, tasting dust and her own blood. She sees it coming for a good half-second, long enough to know her stiff hips won't turn, that her body has finally, decisively, failed to be fast enough." thesearedogyears.dog/packless.html

thesearedogyears.dog

Dakota Territory, USA · 1885 — Dog Years

Dakota Territory, 1885. A wagon's wheel. A stray bleeding out in the grass. The sky pulling harder.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 04/03/2026

My brain's writing a novella set in a corporate climate refuge in 2038 when I only asked it for a short story. Your dog's violated the terms of employment/residence/existence and the clock's ticking. I think it shares DNA with Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but nobody gets the luxury of going mad. #WIP

A man sits strapped in a chair wearing a metal helmet, facing a masked figure in a clinical setting. A still from Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985).

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 03/03/2026

Thank you! Built it with no clue what I was doing, so that means a lot 😄

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 03/03/2026

Honestly I wasn't setting substack alight. But since leaving and building a wee site of my own (with no idea how), I found the fringe benefit of not having to pick your aesthetic from a limited menu. The page itself becomes part of the story, not just a container for it. #indieweb #booksky

Screenshot of four pages from an indie website hosting stories from a collection about dogs and humans across deep time.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 02/03/2026

'Why Dogs?' #3 Writing stories across different times and places needs witnesses. Dogs are perfect for that. Here's Echo from the Fife coast this weekend, fresh from everyone's business. #DogsOfBluesky #booksky #amwriting

A black Labrador sat on a Scottish beach with the harbour wall and fisherman's cottages visible in the background. Her snout is sandy.

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Reposted by Ian C Peake

XPHAIEA @xphaiea.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

SPRING SENTINELS 🌱🌞 Two new characters inspired by the coming of Spring, emerging new growth and bulbs flowering. Made from reclaimed/recycled materials. xphaiea.bigcartel.com Thanks for all the love and comments on these two! #xphaiea #textileartist #artdolls #magick #spring

Spring themed art doll with bulb head in green and yellow hues

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Reposted by Ian C Peake

Karmic Mishap (breaker of Law) @karmicmishap.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Ah, but the trick is I am a dragon poet. My words can destroy. #haiku #senryu #poetry

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 27/02/2026

dragon poets know word-flames raze dead wood only so word-shoots may grow

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 26/02/2026

I've been writing a dystopian short story set in 2038. Now I'm wondering if I need to bring it forward a few years, or just raise the stakes. Possibly both. Reality outpacing pessimistic imagination.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 26/02/2026

"If I must be a relic in an attic, at least let the attic be my own." History is running hot in the early days of the twentieth century. In Vienna an aristocrat, his dog, and an empire are all on borrowed time. Read the story here while the Mahler plays: www.thesearedogyears.dog/herrengasse.html

thesearedogyears.dog

Vienna, Austria · 1898-1914 — Dog Years

Vienna, 1898-1914. A black Labrador. An empire collapsing. Loyalty until the end.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 25/02/2026

As Dog Years grows I'm wondering about structure. The collection spans from the Paleolithic to the far future, so should the future stories publish together as a bloc, or threaded through everything else in order of when I ship them? 😅 Genuine question. I have thoughts but I'm curious about yours.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 24/02/2026

I grew up on spoken word vinyl discs like HCA's Snow Queen, with voice acting, snowstorms, hoofbeats etc. That's why I'm risking hokeyness to put optional ambient sounds with the Dog Years stories. Nobody has to use them. But if they do, I hope they feel like bedtime stories for grown-ups. #indieweb

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 23/02/2026

Dogs arrived before we had a fixed home to offer them. Before we had reliable food to share. In many ways before we'd done becoming recognisably human. They were just there, and up for it. Whatever we both are, we became it together. So umm, yeah, that's why dogs. Wait where'd you go? #dogsofbluesky

A freaking gorgeous black Labrador taking a moment to sniff snowdrops with her snoot.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 23/02/2026

Horses: maybe 6k years ago, when we'd decided to do wars and long distances. They've been with us for extraordinary moments, but they're flighty one-tonne prey animals, aren't easy to read, and when the day's misadventures are done they go back to the stable, not the foot of the bed. 3/4

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 23/02/2026

Cats showed up 7k-10k years ago, once we'd built settlements and filled granaries. They came for the mice, stayed for the worship... and like, have we even domesticated them yet? ( #catsofbluesky amiright?). They're totally worth their own chronicles, but their adventures tend to be their own. 2/4

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 23/02/2026

POV: we're in the kitchen at someone's party, you've made the mistake of asking about my writing project, and now you want to know why I couldn't have picked cats or horses instead of dogs for my 35k-year time-hopping short story thing. Buckle up. 🧵 1/4

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 22/02/2026

Left me with a furrowed brow. I'm not sure I could've left the pipers either.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 21/02/2026

She never remembers to put the flowers in a vase. Of course she doesn't 🥺. Great stuff.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 20/02/2026

Writing a story set in a 2038 corporate enclave, with a millennial protagonist in his mid-40s. How do we think millennials are going to read as characters by then? What will the tells be: the verbal tics, the specific exhaustions, the things they couldn't quite shake? Asking for a man and his dog.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/02/2026

Haha thanks 😄 Yeah, exactly- when you list the 'standard dog attributes' you basically get a recipe for coolness: live in the moment, enjoy your people, show love freely, hold few grudges, embrace dumb joy. Conclusion: cool guys, worth writing about forever. Thanks for the repost too!

A black Labrador looking lit af on a Scottish hillside in winter.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/02/2026

A boy, his grandfather, the grandfather's grandmother, and the dogs they refused to let the priests lead away. Next, Dog Years visits Bronze Age China. “The ancestors demand much... but they do not know one dog from another.” thesearedogyears.dog/shu.html #ShortStories #HistFic #DogYears

thesearedogyears.dog

Yellow River Valley, Shang Dynasty China · 1200 BCE — Dog Years

Yellow River Valley, 1200 BCE. A grandfather's story. A ratter named Shu. The tomb that could not see.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/02/2026

I'll always remember where I was when I read that alt text. "...official psychopomp of the British royal family..." ☺️

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 19/02/2026

The challenge isn’t a single conflict so much as proximity. They have an hour where old narratives are available to them, and the work is choosing what not to do with that access. The dog keeps them uncomfortably close- and keeps the cold war from turning decisively hot.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 18/02/2026

It’s two ordinary people who once loved each other and were together long enough that they know exactly where the other’s tender spots are, and how to use them. The dog’s a middle-aged GSD type: steady, observant, invested in everyone staying more or less intact.

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Ian C Peake @thesearedogyears.dog · 18/02/2026

It’s part of a collection of short stories where dogs being dogs are a lens on humans under pressure. This one’s about an ex-couple who shouldn’t be anywhere near each other, stuck together in a park for a painful hour, for the sake of the dog- who's not quite oblivious, but trying her best.

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